Space Habitat Data Centers—For Future Computing

Abstract

Data from sensor-bearing satellites requires processing aboard terrestrial data centres that use water for cooling at the expense of high data-transfer latency. The reliance of terrestrial data centres on water increases their water footprint and limits the availability of water for other applications. Therefore, data centres with low data-transfer latency and reduced reliance on Earth’s water resources are required. This paper proposes space habitat data centres (SHDCs) with low latency data transfer and that use asteroid water to address these challenges. The paper investigates the feasibility of accessing asteroid water and the reduction in computing platform access latency. Results show that the mean asteroid water access period is 319.39 days. The use of SHDCs instead of non-space computing platforms reduces access latency and increases accessible computing resources by 11.9–33.6% and 46.7–77% on average, respectively.

Space-Based Data Centers and Cooling: Feasibility Analysis via Multi-Criteria and Query Search for Water-Bearing Asteroids Showing Novel Underlying Regular and Symmetric Patterns

“…In addition, the study also examines the feasibility of using the distance to the Earth at an upcoming approach to determine the ability of privately owned space vehicles to visit identified asteroids. This extends the research in [2] by investigating the viability of using high-profit asteroids to obtain water for cooling space-based data centers. Furthermore, the presented study examines the effectiveness of using another search approach instead of the Asterank database approach presented in [2] with regard to determining the potential of obtaining water from an asteroid.…”

“…These data centers can also be cooled using water from asteroids. The discussion in [2] investigates the feasibility of using water aboard asteroids for cooling space-based data centers. This is undertaken by analyzing asteroid data from asteroid databases.…”

“…The study and the data analysis conducted in [2] have not considered the execution of multiple criteria searches on the Asterank database. The conduction of a multi-criteria search query is helpful in obtaining data, information, and insights on the suitability of different asteroids for use in the potential mining of water to cool space-based data centers.…”

“…The motivation here is to identify the cost-effective and easily approachable asteroids that have water content and potential accessibility by privately owned space vehicles. This rationale has not been addressed in [2] but is considered in the study being presented. In addition, the presented study opines that space habitat-hosted data centers (in outer space) will be used by private cloud-computing organizations.…”

Internet of Things in Space: A Review of Opportunities and Challenges from Satellite-Aided Computing to Digitally-Enhanced Space Living

“…experiments are yet to be done for large scale data centres in space. The work in [101] proposed data centres in space (in the Earth's orbit) which can make use of water mined from asteroids for cooling in order to reduce the usage of Earth's water for data centres. This is argued to be possible due to water-bearing asteroids coming near earth, once a year.…”